/*
 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one
 * or more contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file
 * distributed with this work for additional information
 * regarding copyright ownership.  The ASF licenses this file
 * to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the
 * "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance
 * with the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
 *
 *   http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
 *
 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing,
 * software distributed under the License is distributed on an
 * "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY
 * KIND, either express or implied.  See the License for the
 * specific language governing permissions and limitations
 * under the License.
 */

package org.apache.felix.ipojo.manipulator;

import java.io.IOException;
import java.util.List;

import org.apache.felix.ipojo.metadata.Element;

/**
 * A {@code MetadataProvider} is responsible to provide iPOJO's metadata.
 *
 * @author <a href="mailto:dev@felix.apache.org">Felix Project Team</a>
 */
public interface MetadataProvider {

    /**
     * Gather all the metadata.
     * @return a list of iPOJO metadata (never return null)
     * @throws IOException if something wet wrong during gathering.
     */
    List<Element> getMetadatas() throws IOException;
}
